DutchEnery

Uh oh, the deed finally has been done – the PM has decided enough is enough. Perhaps she was forced to do so or her husband told her to. Whatever, and I must say she has been a failure as a PM, just another administrator with no capacity to lead. Because that is what a PM needs most of all, how to tell other people to get on with it and follow the plan, the PM plan! This has been her biggest failure, she could not do that or so it appears. As a result the government became a rudderless ship. Sending underweight civil servants to serious negotiations must be one of the biggest idiocies of all time. But there it is and over the next year we will read a number of books all saying one thing – her failure to step up to the parapet. Indeed that is what a PM needs, he or she needs to get drunk now and again, probably swears and throws things around No.10. Wow, that’ll be a show. No, seriously we need a fighter, a self-centred steel-cladded boxer. Frankly, except for one candidate there is r

Politics is a bit of a strange thing, is it not? It certainly challenges oneself. I say this because having originally come from a sound left social household where dad would not condone any talk of business laissez-faire as a son I would rebel. Well, OK it sure puts your mind pointing to other things. Mostly opposite things. But in the UK I found that just left of centre politics suited me well. That is why the Social Democrats appealed. Then the upheaval started and is still going on today. The SDP became the Liberals despite the new name Liberal Democrats, Labour turned so far left they have fallen off the stage and the Conservatives, which are basically three different parties, left, centre and right, have lost the plot and cannot remember how to govern. The point of it all is that ever since WW2 we have been looking how to fit in with a totally changed Europe. Looking at Europe which we should do a bit more often in this country, you will notice mostly a type of coalition govern

Ah, Eurovision time again. The UK last again as well, lovely! Congrats to the Netherlands on winning this extravaganza of drivel. Every song had to be as loud as possible, screaming at the top of the mediocre voices. There was not a single song that could be called memorable. This is not sour grapes. The UK deserved to be last. When I watched and sat down to be entertained I quickly downed my beer and turned to cognac quickly. When our entry came up I said ‘Who?’ ‘Never heard of him’. Obviously we have not spent any time in preparation, just picking someone with a reasonable voice to belt out another ‘boom-boom song’. It was remarkable how many songs had exactly the same drumbeat. Frankly I would vote Brexit after that lot. At least the BBC needs to have a good look at how it manages this effort or if it cannot, drop the whole thing. Ed 25/5 - Just read an interesting article in a national newspaper. More or less saying that whatever we have, even a song by someone like Tom Jones o

Another great idea sprung from the mind of the PM – we must eradicate homelessness. Yeah, you heard it here as well as in the national newspapers and TV. Of course, homelessness is an abhorrent social ill but it has been with us for a very long time. One of the problems in this country is the politicians’ propensity for making big sounding claims without any background whatsoever. We are going to eradicate homelessness, we are going to reform Europe, we are going to eradicate child poverty, we are going to ban petrol and diesel cars by 2040. And if they are actually doing something, look what happens. We are going to close all the mines. What happened? Thousands on the social, illnesses, drugs, a lost generation and we are still suffering the results of that decision years after. It has to be said – why make such badly thought out exclamations? Is it just to look good? To make us the great unwashed, believe that politicians are actually looking after our well-being? Let me tell you,

There is a lot of talk about homelessness today. It is a problem because we see lots of unfortunate people on the streets sleeping rough. But what worries me is the continual talk of just building more houses. Affordable homes. Well, that is just about the same as putting a lid on an open sewer. Simply because it is not a solution. Besides concreting over the Green Belt which has now been preserved for quite a number of years is now under threat. For me the answer is to look at the causes of this. I can see immigration causing pressures on housing especially in the larger cities. The social impact of young people being thrown out of the family home, through drug use or family breakdown through stress brought on by the 24/7 lifestyle now prevalent. And of course the birth rate has been rising as well. Although we hear from time to time about these problems, it seems no-one really links these to homelessness. A side issue of this is the westward movement of older people. They sell expe

Having just returned from a trip to Holland to see  family I was rather pleased to see the cleanliness in general of the streets, green patches of grass and the motorway edges. In Britain and Wales we are drowning in all sorts of rubbish that float around streets, parks and everywhere else. You may ask – what is different? We are all human beings? Indeed we are but it is our attitude towards the environment. We in the UK have a different attitude, sort of ‘I have rights, and I can do what I want’. People in the UK have no respect for the environment, do not want to change their behaviour and have no intention to help clean up the environment. All under the adage of – It is not my problem, it’s not my job. We can talk endlessly about who should do what but in the end it all stays talk and no action. This Swedish girl is right, it is time for action, we have possibly just 10 years to get it right. It is time to stop putting our heads into the sand like ostriches. The lion of disaster i

It is absolutely amazing as to how present-day politics perform. One would have thought that a two-party system is the ideal way to govern. Because the party in power, with a decent majority, can get its policies through without too much trouble. Well, mainly true but not when the party in power is a minority government. Yet in other countries, like Holland, they work with coalitions, not just two parties but sometimes three or four forming the government. This seems to work well in the main. Taking Brexit (again) we can easily see the failings of a minority government. Especially when the party propping up the governing party is dead-set against the proposed policy. In other words – mayhem. Another thing that amazes me is the shallowness of UK politics, the way politicians use the media. It all shows an enormous amount of grandstanding. But the most amazing thing is this – in 2016 the government instigated a referendum on the question ‘Do we leave or stay in the EU’. A simple quest